’Snow Flower’: Chinese soap opera gets the gong

A sort of Asian variation on “Fried Green Tomatoes,” director Wayne Wang’s “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” contrasts the lives of two pairs of lifelong friends. Snow Flower and Lily grew up together in 17th-century China, while Nina and Sophia are very much 21st-century women. A bloodline crosses the centuries: Lily was one of Nina’s ancestors.

Unfortunately, the movie is hopelessly lopsided, since the story of Snow Flower and Lily is considerably more absorbing — and convincingly acted — than the generally stilted, hard-to-swallow contemporary material. Although they seem perfectly at home in the Hunan Province of the early 1800s, Bingbing Li, in the dual roles of Lily and Nina, and Gianna Jun, as Snow Flower and Sophia, have a far more challenging time in modern-day Shanghai. Neither actress sounds particularly confident speaking English, and the groan-worthy dialogue they’re given (“I’m writing a book: It’s about the old days — but I think it’s really about us!”) doesn’t help matters at all.

But the parallel plotlines here don’t complement each other — they strangle each other. Every time Wang cuts away from Lily and Snow Flower the movie sinks into soap-opera-style mediocrity, and by the time he gets back to the historical drama it takes a while to pick up where we left off.

As children, wealthy Snow Flower and poor but lovely Lily were chosen to be “latong,” inseparable sisters, by a matchmaker. Almost 170 years later, Nina and Sophia became fast friends through their mutual love of pop music and forbidden snacks known as “oily buns.”

Both relationships would be complicated by outsiders (Lily ends up wedded to a dork who allows his obnoxious mother to treat her like a slave; Nina disapproves of Sophia’s bad taste in men) and suffused with secrets. Snow Flower and Lily exchange messages written on the panels of a fan, while Sophia lives a double life that she won’t — or can’t — share with Nina.

“Snow Flower” is undeniably eye-pleasing, with its shimmering cinematography and superb use of muted colors and shadows. It’s mystifying, though, that a film with ample potential for jerking tears and touching hearts never accomplishes its goals.

Amusingly, “Snow Flower” turns out to have been produced by Wendi Murdoch, the wife of Voldemort, uh, Rupert. Why she put her energy (and probably some of her husband’s money) into a film that chronicles one nightmarish marriage after another might be a far more compelling tale than either of the ones on the screen.